


Promises Kept

by en passant (corinthian)



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! ARC-V
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-13 22:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,680
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4539630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/corinthian/pseuds/en%20passant
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"I'm glad you're here with me." It's Shun who says it first.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Promises Kept

The first class they have together is Home Ec. Shun knows the teacher — because she's also the calculus teacher — and knows that the semester will be rife with partner activities and group projects and It's So Much Fun to Get to Know Each Other. He's had enough years of school to have developed a kneejerk reaction to group work and every time he hears a teacher say, _and I'll pick your partner!_ he sees red.

"Shun and Ute!" Ms. Miyami announces, _beams_ , "I hope you two can get along!" Her enthusiams isn't shared by Shun, who does his best impression of a man on death row. To his credit, Ute, Shun's new partner doesn't seem put off by it.

"Hey," Ute says. Shun grunts and they shove their desks together and Ms. Miyami gives them a single piece of folded stiff paper and has them write _Shun & Ute_ on it. They'll be partners for the rest of the semester and Shun is praying for a swift death.

Two days later the first conversation they have is this:

"Don't mess this up for me." Shun says, point blank, when Ms. Miyami announces that their entire grade is going to be based on creating a family dinner, complete with place settings and a _theme_ at the end of the semester.

"This is a graduation requirement," Ute agrees, but Shun can't figure out if that's an agreement because Ute also needs to pass the class to graduate — he can't be a senior, right? — or if it's some kind of slight about _Shun' status and while he's grinding his teeth and trying to figure it out Ute volunteers them to go first on the day of presentations._

"What did you do that for!?" Shun hisses.

"We'll be just fine." Ute quirks the oddest smile, "Wouldn't you rather get it out of the way?"

Shun has to admit, he has a point.

The problem is, neither of them knows what to do for their project. They have the entire semester to craft it and most people (from the sounds of their classmates) are going to do what their family does every night for dinner. Shun can't admit that his mom works late and that it's usually just him and Ruri and Ute doesn't volunteer his family life either.

It's two weeks before the end of the semester when they've both decided to give up and are sitting around the kitchen table (at Shun's place, because the one time they went to Ute's the view of the Heartland amusement park otuside the window was too big and bright and distracting and instead of working they both snuck out, hopped the ticket fence and went to the fun house instead) with zero ideas.

"What about a holiday dinner?" Ruri asks, sitting down between them with a stack of books on geology and a blackberry soda with lychee jellies.

"Don't drink that junk," Shun says. He's been on a health campaign for a year, ever since he lost the fight about Ruri's choice in clothes. (He will, too, lose the health campaign, just like how he loses every fight against her.)

"Do you want to cook a roast for hours on end?" Shun asks.

"We're hoping for something simple," Ute adds.

"But not too simple, huh?" Ruri takes a big drink out of her soda, careful to catch her brother's eye as she does so. "Sorry you got stuck with my slacker brother."

"Ruri!" 

"He's not so bad."

Together, the three of them, craft a family dinner of leftovers. Casserole, quick cooked vegetables and bread pudding. Shun carefully writes down the recipe for each one, Ute portions them out and Ruri taste tests.

They get a B on the assignment because they forget to make place settings and neither of them wants to explain what a family dinner means. In the end it doesn't matter, though, because next semester the Fusion Dimension comes and razes Heartland to the ground.

* * *

Shun knows he has to take care of Ruri first. It's not too difficult to grab a bag and throw things into it, to keep an eye on Ruri who is doing the same and they both wear the same expression that says, if mom is okay she'll catch up with us later. (Ruri knows she has to take care of Shun, because their mother had always said, when I'm gone you'll only have each other.)

They sneak out the back, behind their house, and down through the alleys they used to play in. Once, Ruri had found a secret passage that went down underneath one of the highways and spilled into the aqueduct. It was ironic, because at the time it had been too dirty, too unsafe and full of bugs for them to spend much time down there. But with the soldiers with their sword shaped duel disks moving through the streets, the aqueduct was suddenly the safest place to be.

"Mom doesn't know where we'd go." Shun says, roughly, when they hunker down for the night. He means it as a way to excuse that they're going to just just moving.

"We could go back for her." Ruri replies and she's silhouetted by the dying sunset and the red and orange streaks across her face and Shun is afraid for her. 

"No way," he says, grabs her wrist and intends to never let go. He's too afraid of losing her too. "I need to keep you safe."

He decides, because it feels like the only choices are to go back for someone he's not sure is still alive or protect the present in front of him, that he'll protect the present, first.

"We can't do this alone." Ruri isn't doubtful, she's hard. In the few hours that have passed since they ran from their house and hidden under the bridge, she's aged years. Shun sees more of himself in her face than he ever has before: unhappy, jaded, ready to take on the world at any given moment.

"We'll — we'll be okay." Shun starts and then finishes, knowing that it doesn't sound true to either of them.

"There's no point in carrying on if we're the only ones left," Ruri counters. "I can't live just because you're alive too." Her voice raises and they're both too tired and on edge and he's certain that if they keep talking the soldiers will find them so he presses his hand against her mouth and tries to ignore the way her eyes narrow. Her expression is half-wounded and half-betrayed and he doesn't know what else to do.

They'll back, when Shun is certain the soldiers have moved on to the next area. But they won't be able to find their house, because the entire block is nothing more than black outlines and charrmed remains. Ruri doesn't say that it's his fault, but her shoulders are square to him and everything about her posture is a challenge.

_We have to do better._

He agrees and promises himself to never be so afraid again.

* * *

Ute is the first person they find alive again. There's soot on his cheeks and he doesn't even have a bag, instead there's just his deck clutched in one hand and a grim look on his face that tells them everything. Ruri carefully pries his fingers loose from his deck and deactivates his duel disk and he says, "I want to stop." It's Shun who gathers Ute up in his arms, grounds them both.

"We're here." Shun says, meaning, they were still alive. "We can change things." For the better.

"We have to survive, if we want to go home." Ruri adds. Her voice always cracks on the word _home_ and Shun's noticed that it starts to waver on _survive_ too. He needs to be a better job protecting her.

All and all, there's seven of them. Shun, Ruri, Ute, Mika, Eiko, Mako and Haru. They weren't people who knew each other before — except for Shun, Ruri and Ute. Mika was from across town, her parents had been janitors at the amusement park. They had never made very much money and had been in deep debt and Mika laughs about it at night but there's always an edge of hysteria to it. She likes to repeat: thank goodness we got invaded, or I'd have to pay off all their debt. No one asks what happened to her parents.

Eiko used to be a school teacher. She taught elementary school and was never a very good teacher — by her own admission. She often talks about her kids, where they could be now, what they would be doing. Sometimes she'll ask what day it is and mention that it would be a student's birthday, a test day, a day off from school.

Neither Mako nor Haru says much about themselves, but they're old enough to be in college. Ruri always says to Shun and Ute that she'd like to get to know them better, the two college boys who fell in line with them when they were running through the street after upsetting a camp of soldiers.

She'll never get to, because they'll get ambushed and Mako and Haru will exchange a single knowing look and make their decisions. It's not the first time, or the last, that any of them will have to carry on after someone else's sacrifice.

"I keep thinking it will get easier." Ruri says, when Mika got cut down from behind. "It's painful."

Ute takes her hand and squeezes and Shun thinks he needs to do better. They take to skirting enemy camps on purpose, then, to get intel. They all become faster runners, stronger duelists — except Eiko who has never been much of a duelist but she's a crack shot with a pistol, throws a mean curveball or small rock, and has taken out more Fusion soldiers with a lead pipe than any of them have with cards. It's Eiko and Ute who argue the most, because she says she's an adult and these are the choices she's making and that they, as children, shouldn't have to do something similar. It's not that Ute disagrees with her, but he can tell how much it wears on her, too.

They lose Eiko because it wears on her too much and she says, "I can't do this anymore." and walks into the night.

Ute tells Shun, privately: Neither can I.

* * *

"I'm glad you're here with me." It's Shun who says it first. They're on the same side of the wall, with Ruri across from them, staying out of the way of the large searchlights scanning the area. The Fusion soldiers have been trying to ferret out the last of the resistance — and something else. They hadn't been able to figure it out yet, but every camp of soldiers they had spied on were looking for "it" as well.

"Shun?" Ute asks.

"This would be harder, without you."

"It's the same for me."

For a moment, they both let themselves enjoy the moment, pretend the hammering of their hearts is just from their confessions and has nothng to do with desperation. They let themselves, for a moment, believe that everything was going to be all right.

* * *

"I can't do this alone." Was the only thing Shun said, after Ruri was taken. 

"You aren't alone."

That too was a promise.

* * *

They finally cross dimensions. By then, they look different and act different and _are_ different. They take the time to cover their faces but also to wear red for their fallen comrades — and they argue more, because that is one of the few things they still have left. Shun has lost his home and Ruri and thrown all of the rest of his promises away. Determination for his companions, for his home, for himself. Those are the only three things he carries into battle.

Ute carries two things, himself and his promises.

"You can't keep doing this." It's Ute who rounds on Shun, night after night. They won't duel — because once friends turn their cards on each other they won't be friends anymore. Duels to the death are too commonplace to settle arguments that way. Even if they both remember a time when after school any petty argument could be settled with a duel, when what movie you were going to see could be staked on a duel. Shun remembers, when he takes the time to indulge the past, their first duel when he'd been so taken aback by Ute's skill. Ute remembers, every day, because that's the place he's fighting hard to return to. Ute suspects that Shun doesn't think about returning to that time at all — because that would distract him from the other, more immediate, problem: Ruri.

"I won't sit around and do nothing."

"Going out and harming people isn't —"

"Isn't what? Productive? _Nice?_ Associating with LDS is essentially supporting them." Shun hisses back. If they aren't with us, they're the enemy.

"There has to be another way! The pain has to stop."

"I'm getting Ruri back."

"I want her back too, Shun."

"Then stop getting in my way."

"Shun. I can't do this alone either." Ute doesn't stop him, but his words make Shun pause.

". . . I can't afford that." To stop. Shun finally says. He won't stop, and Ute knows it, but for that night he'll stay at the hideout instead of hunting the LDS. They curl up together, out of line with the door and near enough to the second door that they could make a quick exit if need be. Ute feels reassured with Shun at his back and they lightly twine fingers knowing that in the morning when they wake up, they'll no longer be holding hands.

* * *

It takes Shun days before he believes that Ute is gone. He didn't see it happen, there isn't definitive proof — a small part of his hope remains. But he knows, he should have strangled that part of himself back when he turned his back on his mother and fled with his sister because he still hopes he'll see her again someday and he knows he will keep hoping to see Ute again.

It's the same part of him that keeps driving him to save Ruri, after all.

* * *

It's ridiculous that Akaba would have mistaken Ute and Yuuya. Shun knows in an instant which one he's speaking to, even if they have (had?) the same eyes and chin and when Yuuya is embarrassed he shares Ute's slightly sideways look.

But Yuuya seems so much younger, too much like the Ute that Shun first met, at school. It's clear that he's not used to duels meaning more than just a check in the W or the L column and even though he _tries_ Shun keeps thinking: it's not enough. He sees Ute, twice, in glimpses. Each one twists hope viciously in his chest, like a knife.

He plays the game that Akaba Reiji puts forth. It's first instinct to strike out again, but he remembers that Ute told him that they were losing themselves to pain, that there had to be another way and Shun had lost too much — without even Ute's heart to argue with he had nothing.

It's only after their jaunt to the Synchro Dimension goes to Hell, though, and Fusion has set the world on fire again that Shun sees Ute again. Sakaki Yuuya runs with him down the street, his duel disk held in front of him properly — like a weapon. They turn the corner and in the pause between waves of Fusion Soldiers, Yuuya — no, Ute, looks him in the eye and says: "You aren't alone, Shun."

_I'm here._

And they win, of course they win, because there isn't anything in the multi-dimensions that's stronger than the rebellion when they're working together. It makes Shun believe again because together, as comrades, anything is possible and anything can be saved.

After the duel he twines his fingers with Ute's, just long enough to say to him: "You aren't either, we can still do this."

"Yeah, we can, Kurosaki!" Yuuya replies.


End file.
